NASA's final Shuttle
mission of 1998 came to an end this evening with the landing of Space
Shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center. Following a 4.6 million mile
journey, STS-88 Commander Bob Cabana guided the orbiter down onto runway
15 with landing gear touchdown occurring at 9:54 p.m. CST.

While weather
forecasts in the final days of the mission had indicated that rain showers
might delay the astronauts return, the weather cleared, allowing Entry
Flight Director John Shannon to give a "go" for the deorbit
burn which occurred at 8:46 p.m. CST.

Tonight's landing
at KSC marked the 10th night landing in the history of the Shuttle program.
It was also the 17th straight landing at Kennedy Space Center and the
24th in the last 25 Shuttle missions to land at the Florida spaceport.

While Endeavour
is back on firm ground, 246 miles above, the new International Space
Station continues to orbit with all systems functioning normally. The
current orientation of the ISS has the Unity module facing the Earth
and the Zarya module facing deep space. The station is also in a slow
rotation at one revolution every 30 minutes to maintain the proper heating
and cooling. The next shuttle assembly mission to the station is STS-96,
scheduled for launch aboard Discovery in May.

Cabana and his
crewmates, Pilot Rick Sturckow, Mission Specialists Nancy Currie, Jim
Newman, Jerry Ross and Sergei Krikalev will remain in Florida until
Thursday morning when they are scheduled to return to Houston. The STS-88
crew are scheduled to land at Ellington Field, near the Johnson Space
Center at approximately 10:30 a.m. CST where they will be welcomed home
with a crew return ceremony.